By Ted Pennekamp

There will be no consolidation in the foreseeable future for the Wauzeka-Steuben and Prairie du Chien school districts.

The Wauzeka-Steuben School Board voted 4-0 at its regular meeting Monday night not to pursue consolidation. One board member was absent due to work-related reasons. Kordus said that the board members felt that it wasn’t in the best interests of the district to consolidate at this time.

The Prairie du Chien School Board had left the possibility of consolidation open, and at a recent meeting board members stated that a decision would be up to the Wauzeka-Steuben School Board as to whether or not to pursue the matter further.

Even though the two districts won’t become consolidated, the consolidation feasibility study did provide insight into the two districts. The two districts had hired the R.W. Baird Company to conduct a financial study, and the final report of the study had recently become available.

"The study provided valuable financial information that can serve both districts well for the next three to five years," said Wauzeka-Steuben District Administrator Roger Kordus.

Kordus noted that the study provided detailed information regarding numerous aspects of each district’s recent financial history, current situation and future projections.

"The study allowed us to have a critical view of the entire district and our
programs," said Kordus. "It crystallized our financial situation inside and out."

The state is encouraging consolidation by offering financial incentives. It was projected that a consolidated Wauzeka-Steuben and Prairie du Chien School District would have received approximately $1.2 million per year for the next five years. Kordus pointed out, however, that the resulting consolidated district would have to prepare itself for when this money was no longer available.

Other factors regarding consolidation also needed to be considered, including programming, facilities and building usage and community impacts.

The process of looking into the feasibility of consolidation, "brought out a great deal of pride in our programs and showed a tremendous amount of community support for our schools," said Kordus.

By Sandy Vold

Wauzeka native Joe Pomerening has recently received $1.39 million from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, a division of the National Institutes of Health. The $1.39 million, which will be spread over five years, will be used to study the biochemical controls of cell division. Pomerening is an expert on the regulation of the cell cycle, a network of interactions that directs a cell to divide or stop dividing. When something goes wrong in that process the result can be uncontrolled cancerous growth. Pomerening’s area of investigation is the way in which proteins organize to transmit information to the cell about when to begin or not begin the process of cell division. Understanding this process could provide a clue to controlling cancer. He is an assistant professor at Indiana University in Bloomington. Earlier this year, he was named Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences and was awarded $240,000 from the Pew Charitable Trusts, a grant reserved for life scientists.

Pomerening, son of Christine and the late George Pomerening, has come a long way from Wauzeka, but he firmly believes it is because he came from Wauzeka that he has been so successful. He credits his farm background, the school system and his family with contributing to that success.

His interest in science, he says, goes back to growing up on the farm, about seven miles north of Wauzeka, and interacting with his father and uncle. His father, George, had farmed while selling seed corn for Pioneer Hybrid, and he was fascinated by the concept of genetically engineering crops to be naturally resistant to pests.

A sophomore biology class, taught by Terri Acker, also fueled his interest, especially when he read a description of biochemistry in his textbook. That description and Acker’s influence set him on track.

He also credits other teachers and other aspects of his school life. His math instructor, John Pfitsch, made students present problems in front of the classroom. "He forced us to get up and talk and think aloud in front of an audience. If we didn’t prepare the night before we paid the consequences," he said. Janet Finn, who was his instructor at Wauzeka for middle school science as well as high school classes, persuaded him to attend a science camp which, he said, "opened my eyes to science."

Pomerening recalls English teacher Thomas Cumberland as a rigorous and caring teacher. "He was a hard-ass," he reminisced with a chuckle, "there was no joking around." He remembers choosing long and difficult books for reading projects just so Cumberland would have to read them too. Far from being ungrateful, however, Pomeren-

ing says, "Boy, did I get a passion for reading from him." If anything, he says he wishes he had paid even closer attention to writing and grammar, since so much of it is required in his authoring of research grants and publications.

In some respects, Pomerening says, attending college at UW-Madison with it enormous class sizes was overwhelming to someone coming from such a small school as Wauzeka. Nevertheless, he felt he was well prepared. "What Wauzeka gave me was opportunity," he says. He was able to participate in several sports, music, forensics and many other extracurricular opportunities. "It gave me independence and pride," he said, "I’ve taken that with me everywhere I’ve been."

Pomerening also credits the support of his family—for nurturing him and then letting him go. "Part of me yearns for family," he says, "but at the same time I had goals I wanted to accomplish. It meant leaving my family behind and devoting myself to my vocation. Because my family was so tight knit I had their support."

Parents, he says, have to be willing to support kids in their independence. "Children’s passion and accomplishments can only be defined by the limits of the parents’ imaginations," he stated. "This is where my mom deserves the most credit of all, because she was there from the very beginning, every concert, every sporting event, and during all of the highs and lows from me being a student to becoming faculty. There is no doubt that she had to be the strongest of all of my family during the past 20 years."

When Pomerening graduated from Wauzeka, he attended UW-Madison and earned a B.S. degree with honors. After graduation, he visited job fairs and talked with company representatives about doing research. Told that he needed more than a B.S., he applied to grad school and attained a PhD in plant biology from the University of Illinois at Urbana. By that time, he had decided that understanding how cells communicate with each other and regulate themselves was an area he wanted to look into. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University School of Medicine, Dept. of Chemical and Systems Biology, from 2000 to 2006, and has been an assistant professor at Indiana University, since 2007.

Although his research does not relate specifically to cancer, it has very important implications for dealing with cancer. "We still don’t know the real causes of cancer," he said. "We’re getting indications. It isn’t just because cells continue to divide or not that a cell has a problem. If we can recognize what processes drive cell division, then we may have a better idea of how to stop it, or control it or understand the errors. We want to identify the differences between cells that are in error and the cells that are correct, and we still don’t know the rules."

In combining research with teaching, Pomerening feels he has found the ‘sweet spot’ of his vocation. "At Madison," he said, "I kept asking how I could maximize the experience. As a grad student in Urbana I started teaching classes and it suddenly clicked." Teaching, he feels, is a natural for him. "I feel there are kids like me and my peers that need that enthusiasm and perspective. I want to find that kid in the audience who’s right on the cusp—maybe thinking of quitting or settling for something less. I want to train the next generation, I want to teach young students to think carefully and critically, rather than be reactive or superficial."

Pomerening is not surprised at his discovery about the pleasures of teaching. There were several teachers and principals among the Hazens on his mother’s side of the family, and his father had taught in both junior and senior high school before becoming a high school principal. "Being a principal," said Pomerening, "was a goal he’d had for many years." He became a principal in the fall of 1991, and died March 14, 1992 of cancer.

Summing up the influences on his life and success, Pomerening says, "What I got from growing up in Crawford County was the desire to learn more. I want to keep unwrapping the gift of learning and discovery." As encouragement to others, he adds, "just because you come from this small place doesn’t mean the world isn’t there for you, too."